Kenneth Turan is the film critic for the Los Angeles Times and NPR’s Morning Edition, as well as the director of the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes. He has been a staff writer for the Washington Post and TV Guide and served as the Times’ book review editor. A graduate of Swarthmore College and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, he is the co-author of Call Me Anna: The Autobiography of Patty Duke. Turan teaches film reviewing and non-fiction writing at USC and is on the board of directors of the National Yiddish Book Center. His most recent books include Free for All: Joe Papp, The Public, and the Greatest Theater Story Ever Told and Never Coming To A Theater Near You. Turan lives in Los Angeles, CA.
Books in order of publication:
The Future is Now: George Allen, Pro Football’s Most Controversial Coach. with William Gildea (1972)
I’d Rather Be Wright: Memoirs of an Itinerant Tackle. (1974)
Sinema: American Pornographic Films and the People Who Make Them. (1974)
Call Me Anna: The Autobiography of Patty Duke. (1987)
Sundance to Sarajevo: Film Festivals and the World They Made. (2002)
Never Coming To A Theater Near You. (2004)
Now In Theaters Everywhere. (2006)
Free for All: Joe Papp, the Public, and the Greatest Theater Story Ever Told (2009)
Not to Be Missed: Fifty-Four Favorites From a Lifetime of Film (2014)
Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg; The Whole Equation (2025)
Oak Lawn Library Friends 